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I could wish your siege had lasted a while longer to give me the glory of delivering you." The sternness faded from Brilliana's gaze. She was not really angry with this overcareful gentleman; she would only have been grieved had he proved the man to serve her well. He was no more for such enterprises than your lap-dog for bull-baiting.
A fantastic possibility danced into Brilliana's brain. She glanced to where Halfman stood moodily ruminating on the method he would employ to loosen Master Hungerford's purse-strings if he had him at his mercy in a taken town.
"My lady," she gasped, "here is Sir Blaise Mickleton, who entreats the honor to speak with you." Brilliana's face darkened for a moment, for she bore no kindness just then to the laggard in war. Then her face cleared again. "Admit him," she said. "He will divert me for want of a better."
Her prisoner made a slight inclination of the head towards Sir Blaise in acknowledgment of the fact of Brilliana's presentation, and said, very calmly: "Why, then, sir, such a jury as your world has empanelled have misread you, for if they summed your flaws aptly in their report of you, they clapped this rider on their staggering verdict, that Sir Blaise Mickleton did, at his worst, do his best to play the gentleman."
He is honest before God." Charles admired her pertinacity. Here was a woman who would not lightly lose heart or change purpose. "I will not wrangle with you," he said. "I think the gentleman deserves death. But because I know very well what it is to love truly, why, I will let you save him if you can." Brilliana's voice was charged with gratitude. "Oh, your Majesty is always noble. But how?"
Again Sir Blaise laughed his fat laugh. "Ha, ha! Shrewd judges of men. I will take no man's judgment but my own of this rascal. Had I word with him you should soon see me set him down." Brilliana's glance wandering from the pied pomposity who strutted before her, saw a sharp contrast through the yew-tree arch.
Any business were a pleasing change from his sick thoughts. "Why, I am a justice of the peace for these parts," Sir Blaise said, "and I am importuned by two honest neighbors to process of law against your lady." Halfman laughed unpleasantly. "The Lady Brilliana's wish is the law of this country-side, I promise you." He grinned maliciously and fingered at his sword-hilt.
"You will know ere the sun is much older," Brilliana answered, composing her countenance, "for here comes the other." As she spoke Tiffany returned, ushering in Master Peter Rainham and a fresh brace of Brilliana's servants, staggering, like their predecessors, under the weight of a great chest.
He had grown so used to himself as Brilliana's ally that he had come to dream mad dreams which were none the less sweet because of their madness.
"I tell you my soul's truth. I love you, I shall love you to the end, whether the end come in a battle on a windy heath, or in an oblong box of a bed." Brilliana's eyes were bright and kind. "You do not know what you are saying. I do not know what you are saying. The world would have to change before I could listen with patience to words of love on the lips of a rebel."
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